Texture Modding
This is the texture moding tutorial, long overdue. It all starts with finding the textures, which are in .dds format. To do this, you will need several tools, which you can find by googling. What Programs Do I Need? ---- * WinRAR (or some other file to open .pak files) WinRAR allows you to search through the Heroes V directory of folders to find the propper texture files. * DDScv: This converts your .dds files into .bmp, .jpg, .psd, .png, and .tga. It will also convert back from said files. Heroes V only reads .dds, so you have to use them (why they couldn't just use .bmp I have no idea) * GIMP, Photoshop, or Paint: These are programs that allow you to edit the texture files. I'll be expaining with Photoshop (5.5) which you may or may not have. If you have GIMP you will have to experiment. Only use Paint if you want to make a peasant with "I <3 NY" on his shirt, because it is not very specific. How Do I Open the Files? ---- Start by opening data.pak with WinRAR. File path: Program Files >> Ubisoft >> Heroes of Might and Magic V >> Data.pak. They designed it specifically to scare everyone, with a thousand different possible folders, and a lot of loose files, plus a lot of files that are in odd places with impossible names. However, texturing is rather easy to find, if you know where to look. However, som textures will still be found in odd places. However, for this tutorial, I will show you how to retexture an imp. File Path: Textures >> Textures >> Creatures >> Inferno >> Familiar.tga.dds. Extract this file to somewhere you can work with. I strongly advise, if you have not already done so, making a file specifically for textures. Have one of each file in your overall texture file: "Changes" "Work in progress" and then if you are working on a mod with multiple textures, you might want to have a file for those, eg, "Conflux" or "Rampart." This will be just a one time mod, so just leave it in the main folder as a .dds. Next, convert the file to a .psd (or .bmp or whatever) with DDScv. It's incredibly easy, so I'll skip that. How Do I Edit the Files? ---- Open the file in Photoshop. At this point you have to decide what you want to do with it. I'm thinking of making a Foliot, which is a rather colorful demon, themed with teal + blackish blue stripes. Start with recoloring the whole imp. You can do this one of two ways: * Image >> Adjust >> Hue/Saturation. Changing the hue will switch all colors. This works alright with the Familiar/Imp texture, because it is almost all one color. The same thing works with some dragons (if you want to make that gold dragon) or some other mostly monochromatic creatures, but it is a problem with other textures (for instance most human units) * Image >> Adjust >> Repace Color. Select a main color and adjust the sliders in the same way you would adjust the Hue/Saturation. This works well if you only need to replace a certain color. For instance, you don't like angels wearing blue? Make 'em green! For the Imp, it works a lot better to use basic Hue/Saturation. (Hue = -168) Then comes painting. The paintbrush is generally the best tool, as its fading gives it a nice, organic feel. Also, if you want to paint without loosing the image beneath, set the opacity (Options >> Opacity) lower, so that the paint is semitransparent. This is handy to avoid deleting stuff beneath the paint (muscles, eyes, shadowing: Because Nival is evil, they put shadows into the texture and not the actual game. Seriously, it's only three lines of code!) Also, if you wish to revert to the way the texture was before, there is the simple History Brush. Here's an example of a wide history brush being used on a thoroughly edited Imp. How Do I Put the Files Back in Again? ---- In WinRAR, (making sure you are in the folder where the file originally comes from) press the Add button, and find the file you modded. The rest flows. After that, open Heroes V, and play with your imp!